US businesses failing to include voice communications in business continuity plans

VoiceNation has published the results of a US study that seems to reveal serious shortcomings in most companies’ business continuity plans. In a survey of 400 companies across the country, 95 percent of companies agreed that there was a critical need for business continuity planning for voice communications but only 2 percent confirmed they had such a plan in place. All companies surveyed stated that daily operations would be interrupted if ‘phones were shut down for an extended period.

“Businesses spend thousands to back up their critical information, and have disaster recovery plans in place for their data networks,” said Joe Schiavone, vice president of sales for VoiceNation. “But the results of this study lay bare the lack of importance many companies place on their voice communications emergency planning in the face of potential terrorism, pandemics, storms and other threats.”

Mr. Schiavone highlighted a common misperception which emerged from the research: that call forwarding is a suitable business continuity response to most crises. “Many businesses feel that their employees can have all calls forwarded to their evacuation location or the location of another office outside the threatened area,” he explains. “The problem is that for call forwarding to work, a call must first come into the company PBX and then be routed to the new location. If the company network is down at the location where the incoming call is directed, that call is going nowhere.”

http://www.voicenation.com/disaster-recovery.shtml

•Date: 4th May 2006• Region: US • Type: Article •Topic: Telecoms continuity
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